Myanmar’s most famous comedian, Zaganar, who has been leading deliveries of aid to survivors of Cyclone Nargis, has been arrested at his Yangon home, a relative said yesterday.
“He was arrested last night. About 10 people came to get him at his place,” said the relative, who was staying in the same apartment in the former capital at the time of Zaganar’s arrest.
She said she did not know why the comedian was arrested, but added that electronic equipment and about US$1,000 were also seized.
Zaganar had been briefly detained along with top actor Kyaw Thu during anti-government protests last year. Those ended with a junta crackdown which left at least 31 people dead, the UN has said.
British human rights organization Amnesty International told a press conference in Bangkok yesterday that they had also confirmed his arrest.
“His house was raided and a number of CDs were taken from his apartment,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty’s Southeast Asia researcher.
“He’s currently being interrogated by a major general in the western district of Yangon... we have no further information at the moment,” he said.
The comedian has been helping volunteers deliver food, shelter and clothing to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which left more than 133,000 people dead and missing when it slammed into the southwest delta on May 2 to May 3.
The military regime has been criticized for blocking foreign relief supplies to about 2.4 million people affected by the storm.
Local volunteers have been trying to fill the void, heading down to the delta with cars laden with private aid.
But some have reported being blocked and prevented by the army from distributing the supplies, despite the government’s insistence in its New Light of Myanmar newspaper that citizens were free to hand out aid.
Meanwhile, Southeast Asian aid experts flew into Myanmar’s devastated Irrawaddy Delta yesterday for a mission to assess cyclone damage, but US navy ships sailed away — laden with supplies rejected by the junta.
Nearly five weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit, leaving 133,000 dead or missing, the first members of the joint ASEAN-UN “Emergency Rapid Assessment Team” flew by helicopter into the shattered towns of Labutta and Pyapon.
The 200-strong team of aid experts from the ASEAN and the UN were to begin moving into remote areas of the delta, where entire villages were washed away in the storm, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said in a statement.
Their final findings will not be reported until the middle of next month, even as the UN estimates that 1 million hungry and homeless survivors have yet to receive any international assistance.
Myanmar has agreed in theory for 10 helicopters from the World Food Programme to ferry supplies into the region, but so far only one is actually flying.
The junta has rejected help from US, French and British warships. Four US ships left the area yesterday, after three weeks of trying to convince the regime to accept their aid.
Lieutenant General John Goodman, commander of Marine forces Pacific, said that even though the USS Essex group was leaving, the US was still ready to offer Myanmar helicopters and landing craft from the amphibious ships.
Myanmar has accused the US of offering aid with unspecified “strings attached.” The generals — always suspicious of the outside world — have long harbored fears of a US invasion.
The junta agreed to allow Southeast Asian nations to coordinate the relief effort, and Surin said that the next two weeks would be “crucial for building international confidence in this joint mission” between ASEAN, the UN and the Myanmar government.
On the ground, hundreds of thousands of desperate survivors have been left to fend for themselves, cobbling together whatever shelter they can find to survive the daily monsoon rains while scavenging for food.
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